The streets of Glassview pulsed with light, laughter, and the clatter of celebration. Stalls were draped in banners of azure and silver, crowds pressing shoulder to shoulder, the air thick with roasted meats, sweet incense, and the acrid tang of fireworks sparks. Lanterns bobbed above the thoroughfares like floating stars, casting shifting glows across cobblestones scarred from months of reconstruction.Caster Spellbound moved through it all almost invisibly, a shadow among the living. He walked with the grace of a man used to command, though his eyes constantly flicked upward, scanning, measuring, reading the currents of mana that hummed invisibly above the city. The festival was meant to honor heroes, him, Sikoa, Solon, the brave few who had risked everything, but in the back of his mind, a dozen other faces haunted him. The students, archivists, and low-tier assistants who had perished in the inferno of the burning library. The necrotic storms. The invisible toll exacted by th

The archive doors seal behind him with a muted thud. Caster does not turn.The sound tells him enough. The locking sigils are old. Spectral Lime originals. No Consortium overrides. No silent alarms. Just layered wards and heavy stone.The lamps inside the restricted wing burn low. Their light is pale and uneven, trapped inside glass cylinders etched with age-worn runes. Shadows stretch across shelves that rise to the ceiling, packed tight with sealed volumes, crystal slates, and memory coils. Dust hangs in the air. Caster steps forward. Each footfall echoes once, then dies. The floor is slate, cracked in places, repaired in others. Old chalk lines still cling to the seams, half scrubbed, half forgotten.He lifts a hand. Mana flows out in thin filaments, brushing the air, tasting it. The wards recognize him. Not his face. Not his name. His pattern.The shelves nearest him hum softly, then fall silent again. He moves deeper.This wing predates Glassview’s expansion. Before Twin Moons.

The courier arrived without bells or escort. He stepped through the western gate of Spectral Lime just before dawn, boots leaving wet prints on the stone. Fog still clung to the lower towers. The wards did not flare. The sentries did not stop him. He walked as if he already belonged there.Caster stood on the balcony above the courtyard when the man looked up.Their eyes met for a brief second.The courier raised one hand, slow, open. In his other hand was a narrow scroll tube made of dull silver. No crest. No color. No signature.Caster lifted two fingers.The courtyard guards stiffened but did not move. The courier crossed the space alone. His pace never changed. He stopped exactly beneath the balcony and knelt once, placing the tube on the stone with both hands.“For Spellbound,” the courier said. His voice was flat. “No return address.”Caster descended the stairs without hurry. Each step echoed. Sikoa appeared at the far archway, already armed. Ardis Valen stood near the pillars

The gate sealed behind him without sound. No wind followed. No echo lingered. One moment, there was an opening in the air, a thin vertical seam of gold-blue light, and the next there was only stone.Caster did not turn around. The Sage Tower rose ahead of him, tall and narrow, its surface carved from pale gray stone veined with old mana channels. The structure did not reach for the sky like Glassview’s spires. It pressed inward instead, compact and controlled, as if the building itself rejected excess. The air felt dry. Every breath carried dust, ink, and the faint metallic tang of dormant wards.Caster adjusted the clasp of his cloak and stepped forward. The cloak was plain. No sigils. No identifying thread. The illusion was not woven into the cloth. It sat deeper, anchored beneath the skin. His face looked older now. Lines cut deeper around his eyes. His hair was shorter, darker at the roots, streaked faintly with gray near the temples. His shoulders were broader. His movements

The bell did not ring. The sound simply stopped. Caster felt it before anyone else noticed. A low hum that had filled the Sixth Ring corridor cut off mid-beat, like breath held too long. The lamps along the wall dimmed a fraction. Not enough to alarm. Enough to be deliberate. He slowed his steps.Two attendants walked ahead of him, gray-robed, silent. Their boots struck the glass-stone floor in careful rhythm. They did not turn.Caster adjusted his gloves. Leather over sigil-thread. He had learned to keep his hands busy. It kept others from watching them too closely.They reached a narrow archway. Clear crystal formed the door. Runes drifted across it like frost patterns.One attendant pressed a palm to the frame. The crystal slid apart without a sound. Inside waited a circular room made entirely of transparent layers. Floor, walls, ceiling, glass reinforced with wards. Lines of runes hovered at fixed distances, forming invisible boundaries.At the center stood a single table. No cha